Red Monika: Lethal Reprisals by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Red-Monika-Lethal-Reprisals-1314158892?file=1

Red Monika: Lethal Reprisals ANIMATION

The Calculus of Flayed Sin

Gold has a particular scent, a metallic tang that mimics the taste of a copper coin placed on a dying tongue. Red Monika knew that scent better than the perfume of roses or the ozone of an approaching storm. It was the scent that had drawn her to the skeletal remains of the Oubliette District, a place where the shadows didn’t just linger—they breathed. The contract had arrived via a courier who had expired immediately after delivering the scroll, his skin turning to a fine, grey ash before he could even ask for a tip. Ten million ducats for the retrieval of the Lapis Heart. It was a sum that could buy a kingdom, or at least a very comfortable eternity of silence.

The man sitting across from her in the ruins of the Sapphire Tavern was not a man at all, though he wore a face like a well-tailored glove. He called himself Valerius, and his eyes were the color of stagnant milk. He moved with a languid, oily grace that suggested his bones were made of something more flexible than calcium. Around them, the tavern groaned under the weight of a century of neglect, the floorboards snapping like dry ribs under the pressure of the mountain air.

"You look at me with such delightful suspicion, Monika," Valerius said, his voice a melodic rasp that felt like a razor blade sliding across silk. "It is your most becoming trait. Well, perhaps your second most becoming. The way you handle those flintlocks of yours is a close third."

Monika leaned back, the crimson leather of her corset creaking. Her hair, a shock of impossible red against the gloom, seemed to absorb what little light remained in the room. She didn’t touch her drink. In places like this, liquid was usually a delivery system for something that would make you forget your own name before it dissolved your liver. "The courier turned to dust, Valerius. People who pay ten million ducats usually afford better health insurance for their staff. Why the Lapis Heart? And why me? There are plenty of cutthroats in this city who would do it for a tenth of the price and a warm meal."

Valerius smiled, revealing teeth that were slightly too many and slightly too sharp. "Because the Lapis Heart is not a jewel, my dear. It is a weight. It keeps the sky from falling in a very specific, very unpleasant part of the world. And as for why you? Because you are the only one who can walk through the Garden of Suture without becoming part of the topiary. You have a... resistance to the divine madness that infests the lower reaches of the Spire. Or perhaps you’re just too stubborn to let reality rewrite your DNA."

"Seductive talk," Monika replied, her hand hovering near the grip of the massive pistol strapped to her thigh. "But I’ve heard better from men who were actually alive. You’re representing the Gilded Hand, aren't you? Those merchants who think they can buy their way into the afterlife by hoarding relics of the First Age."

Valerius bowed his head slightly. "The Hand has its interests. But there are others. The Lords of the Suture, for instance. They believe the Heart belongs to them by right of blood. If you take this job, you are not just a thief; you are a catalyst. You are the spark that will set a very old, very hungry fire into motion."

The job was a trap. Monika knew it with the same certainty she knew the weight of her own breath. But the trap was lined with enough gold to bribe the ferryman a thousand times over. She accepted the contract not out of greed, but out of a perverse curiosity to see what kind of monster could afford such a high price for a suicide mission.

The Spire of Malison rose out of the earth like a jagged black fingernail clawing at the throat of the moon. As Monika ascended the winding, gravity-defying staircases of the outer rim, the air began to change. It grew thick and sweet, smelling of rotting jasmine and ancient parchment. This was the territory of the Lords of the Suture, an occult faction that practiced a form of "sacred surgery," believing that the human form was merely a rough draft to be edited with obsidian scalpels.

She found the first trap in the Hall of Refracted Whispers. The walls were lined with mirrors made of polished lead, reflecting not her image, but her possibilities. In one, she saw herself as a queen of a dead empire; in another, a heap of bleached white bones. The mirrors began to weep a thick, viscous mercury that pooled at her feet, attempting to climb her boots like silver vines.

"Don't look at them, girl," a voice hissed
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